Gross-out horror comedy is my least favorite genre, but this movie's so skillful I have to take my hat off to it.

The plot points verge on the familiar and obvious, but Adams's work with the actors (especially Judd and among the others Jeffrey Donovan, Diane Ladd, Tim Blake Nelson, and Scott Wilson) is so resourceful and focused that she makes them shine.

There's also some gallows humor about the record and newspaper industries, but overall this is a light, genial comedy about denial and self-defense.

Bell presides over this insightful, often droll survey like a sweeter, buffer version of Michael Moore, trolling gyms, universities, and Congress to grill assorted experts.

As in "Amores perros," Iñarritu and Arriaga slice and dice the chronology, which helps distract from the warmed-over story elements and focus attention on the superior performances.

Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's perennial stage comedy about yellow journalism in Chicago hasn't much to offer in the way of action, but in this 1931 adaptation director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) manages to inject a fair amount of visual energy to complement the firecracker dialogue.

Carion might have found a more artful way to dramatize the case's geopolitical impact, but this is still pretty interesting stuff.

Phil Kaufman's version of the Don Siegel SF classic is good as remakes go, but not as good as the original. Where Siegel was swift, compact, and efficient Kaufman tends to be slow, garrulous, and needlessly baroque. Ideas that Siegel knocked off in a few shots are expanded to fill entire sequences—but they're good ideas, and can stand a little stretching. Good allegories never die; they just expand and contract to fit the times.

The movie is quite enjoyable, though, redeemed by Crowe's trademark sincerity and assured handling of oddball character actors.

A potent, moving, liberal-minded docudrama.

A power­ful drama, but if I didn’t know Green had directed it I probably wouldn’t have guessed.

The film is only superficially superficial, and it grows in meaning and resonance as it progresses.

Their relationship is so subtly inflected with fear, envy, and self-loathing on both sides of the class divide that I was drawn in nonetheless. Brody is a compelling presence throughout.

The film rarely strays from easy likability, with Hallstrom's spare, efficient styling creating a sense of chaste northern lyric (simultaneously warm and chilly: everyone wears coats in summer) familiar from early Bergman. More unassuming mongrel than pricey pedigree, but not a bad time in all.

The 37 Yale and Harvard players Rafferty interviews are such a rich and articulate cast of characters that the season leading up to the game and the game itself become an epic story.

Most of the film is set in an abandoned house, where enjoyably murky intrigues abound, and the last ten minutes feature a chase sequence with miniatures that is almost as much fun.

This 2004 video documentary by Werner Herzog arrives in town while his hair-raising "Grizzly Man" is still playing, and it's a fascinating companion piece even though his manipulations are more obvious.

John Woo directed this giddy, mindless jaunt with polish but only a modicum of personal investment from a script by Graham Yost.

Penelop Spheeris's 1988 sequel to her classic 1981 LA punk documentary focuses on the kind of extravagance that the kids in the first film were rebelling against, at least insofar as it manifested itself in stadium-ready rock 'n' roll and its brand-new baby brother, hair metal.

Mildly diverting rather than uproarious, the film still stands out among teen sex comedies for its low-key approach to antic material. The best bits are supplied by Justin Long as Doubleday's stoner brother and Adhir Kalyan as the hero's plummy-accented coconspirator.

The fragmented compositions isolate the characters, trapping them in walled-off worlds -- which makes the brief kiss between Otomo and the grandmother all the more touching.

The comedy approaches true hilarity only when Meyers resorts to the surefire gimmick of having the oldsters get massively stoned at a party, though Streep's dilemma is handled well enough for the movie to accumulate some gravitas as it nears the two-hour mark.

The quiet exploration of late sexuality is remarkable, but the characters' seniority also makes the triangle doubly painful for the woman's husband of 30 years, who suddenly faces the prospect not only of living alone but of dying that way as well.

I can’t deny this is filled with powerfully primal images, but at least one of them--an eviscerated fox that bellows at Dafoe, “Chaos reigns!”­--made me burst out laughing.

Lori Petty does a nice job in the title role of this enjoyable 1995 feature based on the postapocalyptic SF comic book and set in the year 2033; it's basically aimed at teenagers, though it's a lot more feminist than what usually passes for adult fare.

It's a pleasant enough diversion, in an amateurishly personal sort of way, though Townsend's frequent recycling of actors (for reasons of budget rather than laughs) makes for some odd Pirandellian confusions.

Lars von Trier is back, so to speak--he's never visited the States, which makes his snide anti-American allegories even more infuriating to some….But the story holds up well enough to deliver a pointed critique of establishing self-rule at gunpoint.

Despite some fine black comedy, this hovers uncertainly between the novel's tragic precision and "Barfly's" existential burlesque.